I know the article is a threadbare simile, but it more than misses the whole point of Galadriel’s character in the books/movie. For even someone like Galadriel who meets this beyond-human ideal of beauty, purity and “goodness”, the power of the One Ring to dominate life is so corrupting that it would simply turn her into a new Sauron. Which is why after failing to resist temptation, Galadriel leaves Middle Earth and goes into the West. If there’s one point that is hammered in repeatedly throughout the Lord of the Rings, it’s that such absolute power cannot be used for good, despite anyone’s best intentions, and the only recourse is for it to be destroyed.

The uncommitted movement said they weren’t endorsing her, but they also said that people should vote, but not vote for anyone other than Kamala. So, they effectively endorsed her.

The intrusion of capitalism into sleep is a final frontier of absolute exploitation. Why work 8 hours a day when you can work 24 hours a day? Why use vast banks of computer servers to run AI models when you can capture the most efficient and powerful ‘computer’ to ever exist: the human brain. Why provide for housing and recreation when you can lock people in permanent dream states, where they can provide intellectual labor and live in dreamworlds while their physical brain is kept alive through an IV drip.

I am skeptical that any technology trying to directly interface with the slumbering subconscious could work, but I have no doubt that such attempts would be damaging to human health, and would be used to push material imiseration to impossible heights.

Looking at this International Crisis Group’s list of donors:

BP

Chevron

ENI

Open Society Foundation

Rockerfeller Brothers Trust

As well as various Western European & gulf state governments, billionaires and billionaire-founded NGOs. Of course they’re coping: their backers were hoping to get a piece of PDVSA.

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be legalized or that those other benefits aren’t present, I’m saying that cure-alls/panaceas don’t exist and that legalization advocates in the past have indulged in that sort of myth-making.

Hemp/cannabis certainly has benefits, but a lot of those benefits have been exaggerated to support decriminalization/legalization. When it comes to medicine, cannabis has benefits as a non-opioid analgesiac/painkiller, so that’s obviously a huge boon for chronic pain where the risk of opioid addiction and another side-effects are a major concern. However, I would be skeptical of claims of healing properties of cannabis or any other proposed panacea.

Outside an atmosphere like Earth’s, everything is already exposed to intense ionizing radiation from the sun/stars. A bit more from an RTG, even a big one, is a drop in the ocean. If we found signs of extraterrestrial life, then we’d want to be extra cautious about not sterilizing by accident, but that’s not currently a major concern. And of course, any sort of nuclear rocket propulsion would need to be handed with utmost care, but it’s also not a major issue once it’s outside the atmosphere.

The proposal is for a globally-levied tax. Where exactly is capital going to fly to?

It’s been an absurd mishandling of the IP by Take Two. Will probably be permanently stuck in early access with only maintenance development at best.

A lot of people (myself included) had the update installed automatically by Steam with no option for rollback, so it caught people off guard.

It’s buried in the article, but yep it’s a Boeing.

I can’t believe that some actually Vax-maxxed. Absolute legend.

It’s a hoax/transphobic rumor, allegedly from various unsubstantiated reports of schools keeping cat litter or litter boxes. The only case of this actually happening is keeping cat litter on hand to clean up large spills as an absorbant (specifically, it’d be used for cleaning up hazardous spills, like a chemical or blood.)

Either the banking crisis that’s been predicted over the past year due to high interest rates and bad debt, or perhaps there’s more that will come out about how JPMorgan Chase directly facilitated Jeffery Epstein’s operation in the Virgin Islands.

Wow, they discovered the copium index.

I hate how some people/reporters conflate maglev (with a technology that can work) with hyperloop/vacuum trains (which is a technology that doesn’t).

I agree that D&D will always exist, I am just personally uninterested in the direction the game is going with the OneD&D, and I think the source of this muddling path is do to the failure of the original business maneuver with the OGL revision. I don’t really see things getting better under Hasbro, so any major shakeup might be a good thing overall.

Kinda .

I don’t think Tencent would be a particularly great owner for the D&D brand, but they might have been more hands-off than Hasbro went it comes to mucking with the business model, and a major shakeup for D&D could be good. Honestly, WotC (or just D&D) could be doing better if it was an independent operation as opposed to subsidizing the Hasbro revenue sink.

From reading the article, “pre-recorded” and “artificial” voices are already prohibited for unsolicited calls, so I don’t see what this ruling would actually change other than a slight clarification. It’s not like robocallers are actually prosecuted in any meaningful way.

Hasbro has no clue what to do with the game since their games-as-service, closed ecosystem plan went kaput after they backed down on the OGL revision (which would have been necessary to shut out other VTTs and ensure player & DM subscriptions). I think the recent lay offs of senior people in the D&D related teams suggests this as well. This article doesn’t seem well sourced at all, but a shake-up would be very interesting at this point.

Side-stepping some of the speculation and impact on the traditional market/fanbase, I am curious about the interest in D&D in China, as a Tencent acquisition would presumably make it much easier to market the game there. From the searching I’ve done, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of interest in D&D, and there’s no official translation into Mandarin. The movie didn’t do great at the Chinese box office, although Baldur’s Gate 3 did fine? Obviously, if Tencent does put together a subsidiary to design a version for the Chinese market, I’m not sure if they’d want to start by translating/adapting existing books or using the ruleset to design a bespoke version (either with a fantasy setting or based on relevant Chinese IP.)